Next are the photos of the actual Obama in Oskaloosa event that I found on Twitter today.

First, “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands” is now stuck in my head.

Second is the line of folks waiting outside the Nelson Pioneer Farm and Museum. “Really, really, really long line for tickets to attend Pres. Obama’s event in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Enthusiasm gap? HA!”

The above photo of the queue is getting some distribution on the Twitterz. I’m not sure what time it was taken, but the tweet above was sent at 11:11am. The event was to begin at 9am according to this report.

House finance committee chairman Paul Ryan grilled Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on the failure of the proposed budget to work towards solving our long-term debt crisis. Instead of dealing head-on with a $99.4 trillion dollar liability, the Geithner/Obama budget does nothing to avert the looming debt crisis. Geithner’s answer is that his budget stabilizes our current insanely high debt for a few years but does not fix it. Ryan is right, it is all about confidence and trajectory and this budget will not bode well with credit rating agencies or those who might invest in U.S. debt and will result in default.

Presidents and Secretaries of the Treasury have a responsibility to fix problems, this administration and this budget are an epic fail when it concerns future financial liabilities. As Ryan said, “Our Government is making promises to Americans that it has no way of accounting for them!

Like this:

After listening to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s detailed discussion on the Debt, the Budget and Spending on Saturday, along with Congressman Paul Ryan’s assertion that the people are way ahead of the political class on Meet the Press yesterday, there seems to be a disconnect with establishment Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s vision of the way forward.

McConnell’s appearance on Fox News Sunday left me scratching my head, because his apparent biological predisposition to compromise with Democrats was in stark contrast with House leadership.

Like this:

Conventional wisdom has long told us that meaningful Medicare reform is the third rail of politics. So when Paul Ryan proposed the Republican budget containing serious and well thought out and effective reforms of Medicare, it is no surprise that it made headlines and launched a tsunami of criticism from the left.The dispicable ads, including the granny off the cliff posted on this site earlier this week are unfortunate but not unexpected.

What is surprising is that after an overwhelming victory in the house the House Republican Budget started receiving some less than enthusiastic support by establishment types like Mitch McConnell and of course the full assault by the dinosaur Newt Gingrich which he has since issued a retraction and instructed the American people do disregard the statement, I’m not exactly sure how that works but I’ll save that for another post.

We have the old guard, even when faced with the collapse of medicare with this decade, afraid to act while Paul Ryan, who represents the future of the Republican party, boldly proposed and is aggressively advocating for real Medicare reform which will give seniors the power to deny business to inefficient providers, while the Democratic plan is to give government the power to deny care to seniors. These career politicians are conditioned to avoid tough choices and kick the can down the road even when we have come to the end of the road.

The American people do understand that the status quo is no longer an option and they have known it for some time now. The major impetus of the tea party movement was the recognition that this country is in a huge hole and the only two solutions being proposed were digging deeper or kicking the can down the road.

The American people understand that adding four billion dollars a day to our debt is unsustainable. The American people understand that without significant spending cuts and reform of our entitlement programs our debt will continue to explode and destroy our economy. The American people understand that with 10,000 baby boomers a day becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security, those programs are unsustainable without serious reform.

With so much on the line this is no time for timidity, Paul Ryan is willing to lead and if the Republican leadership is to take the Senate and the White House in 2012 they should follow Mr. Ryan’s lead.

Like this:

While Republicans have publicly declared that they are willing to risk losing an election in order to save our nation, Mr. Obama has decided to sacrifice our nation in a blatent attempt to pander his way to a second term. After ignoring his own debt commissions recomendations in his 2012 budget and then calling for yet another debt reduction committee, the community organizer, has made clear that he plans to focus on miniscule domestic cuts limited to waste, fraud, and abuse, large cuts to defense ( odd, since this is actually one of the enumerated federal powers).At the same time he plans to spend more on unions, seniors, and other special interests and increase taxes on the wealthy to balance the budget.

The president at one point clearly and accurately defines the defecit problem;

Now, if we don’t close this deficit, now that the economy has begun to grow again, if we keep on spending more than we take in, it’s going to cause serious damage to our economy. Companies might be less likely to set up shop here in the United States of America. It could end up costing you more to take out a loan for a home or for a car, because if people keep on having to finance America’s debt, at a certain point they’re going to start charging higher interest rates. We won’t be able to afford investments in education or clean energy, or all the things that we care about because we know it’ll help drive our economy and create jobs.

Apparently, he is not retaining what he reads off the teleprompter and he fails to realize that serious cuts cannot wait until after the election as he outlined his impotent plan to reduce our debt.

So what my plan does is it starts with combing the budget for savings wherever we can find it. [skip] I’m not going to quit until we’ve found every single dime of waste and misspent money. We don’t have enough money to waste it right now.[skip] But finding savings in our domestic spending only gets you so far. We’re also going to have to find savings in places like the defense budget.[skip] So we’ve begun to cut those out. And Secretary Gates has found a lot of waste like that and has been able to save us $400 billion so far. I believe we can do that again. Four hundred billion dollars — even in Washington, that’s real money.[skip]And we’ve also got to end tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans

I should add the president also cites impending savings from Obamacare, but nobody seriously believes that this legislation (which double counts the $480 million medicare cuts) will reduce our deficit so I left it out to spare him from further ridicule. His refusal to seriously cut spending recently prompted the S & P outlook downgrade to negative. The notion that he can continue to invest spend to pander his way to the White House and make up for it by taxing the rich is laughable.

I believe that people who have been really blessed in this society like me and have a very, very, very good income can afford to pay a little bit more — nothing crazy, just go back to the rates that existed when Bill Clinton was President. That wasn’t that long ago — (applause) — that that’s a fair thing to do, especially if it makes sure that seniors are still getting their Medicare and kids are still going to Head Start. Why wouldn’t I want to make that sacrifice?

Reverting back to the Clinton taxrates would add $100 Billion revenue. When you consider that Obama’s annual deficit is 1.6 trillion any 4th grader can see the numbers do not add up!

While the president calls for continued pandering by protecting unsustainable entitlements in their current forms Coburn more clearly defines the situation.

“What the country needs to hear from the leaders in Washington is that we understand how big this problem is and that we’re wiling to lose elections to do what’s best for the country and that’s what’s not happening now,” Coburn said on “Fox News Sunday.”